She put her hand through his arm, and they sauntered off, with the other two men in their wake.
“Handsome woman, wasn’t she?” Miss Watts remarked.
“No. I don’t like that type. She struck me as bold.”
Captain Larry O’Leary was the spoiled and petted darling of the boat. The tale of his gallant action under fire, of his wounds, of his decoration for valour, was passed from mouth to mouth, and lost nothing in the retelling.
The men liked him because he was a simple, modest chap, in spite of it all. The women followed him around like a cloud of gnats. He jollied them all from old Madam Van Dyke, who was seventy, to the smallest girl child on the boat.
He looked like a hero out of a fairy book. He had a rollicking, contagious laugh, and a courteous heart toward every one. At the ship concert for the benefit of wounded soldiers, he sang the songs of the trenches, and the marching songs of the Irish troops, the English and the French, in a clear baritone voice. There is no hope of disguising the fact that Larry O’Leary was too good to be true. Like the star in the melodrama, he was 99 per cent. hero.
His only rival for the centre of the stage on the brief voyage was Isabelle. At first she kept to herself, because she was ill, and wanted to be alone. But after a bit she grasped the fact that her aloofness was a sensation, and she was not too ill to enjoy that. Her perambulations about the deck were watched with undiminished interest. Everybody knew everybody else. There were dances, and games and knitting contests, but to all invitations Isabelle replied in the negative.
“Why don’t you talk to some of these people, Isabelle? They seem very pleasant,” Miss Watts said.
“Oh,” sighed the girl, “they bore me.”
Captain O’Leary had made several attempts to get an opening to speak to her in the afternoon, but she had successfully evaded them. Mrs. Darlington in search of the bonny Captain spoke to her.